MIT Admissions Blog - Ben O. '19http://mitadmissions.org/
Copyright 20172017-07-06T21:56:19+00:00Work Hard, Play Hardhttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/work-hard-play-hard
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/work-hard-play-hard
Personally, I have always considered myself a pretty social person. I have always loved just spending a bunch of time hanging out with friends and just kind of doing nothing but chillin. However, on the other end I have always been very serious about school. In high school, there were very many times that I would spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights studying rather than going to whatever social thing my friends were doing. Often, I didn’t really mind because I really liked school and I would also always put in my best effort to try to make it up to them; however, for a number of reasons I feel like my ability to balance work/school with friends/free time has changed a lot since I got to MIT.

One of the biggest changes between high school and college is just the amount of freedom you have. I remember thinking in high school, “I hope the MIT curfew is not too early……… (there is no curfew in college :P),” you can be anywhere at any time just as long as you put in the effort to physically get out of bed (which in all honesty is harder than you might think). For a majority of high school I couldn’t drive, and when I could I spent 80% of the time driving my 4 little siblings around, so spending a lot of time away from home was not really an option. In response, my first semester here I spent a lot of my time going from place to place to place, but we were also on pass no record so it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to continue this “always being social” life style once the second semester started.

In order to compensate for the increase in social life and decrease in hard focuses on studies my first semester at MIT I decided to have a very heavy load over MITs independent activities period in January. This pushed me over from spending too much time being social to me never leaving the library/my room in order to study. Now, I think this isn’t an awful thing because there is always a number of people that have a hard time transitioning from pass no record to having grades again; however, I wouldn’t exactly say I was balanced yet. I was still far too much one side of the pendulum and kind of ignoring the other side.

I would say this stayed true for a majority of my second semester at MIT, and I think the problem with this type of life was that I did not know what to do outside of work once the summer came around. The summer after my freshman year I stayed on campus and worked at the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research. The biggest difference between school and working over the summer is that during the school year you can spend literally all of your time doing work. At any given point in time you could be doing some sort of project, or pset, or studying for exam, or watching a lecture on OCW, or doing textbook reading, etc. etc. etc. However, when you work, you work from 9 to 5 (depending on where) and when you get off you are done, and for me that was a problem and honestly still kind of is.

When I would get off work I would go home, and just browse facebook or watch GOT until like midnightish then go to bed. From time to time over the weekend my friends and I would go out and do things like go to New York, or go to the beach, things like that. However, for 90% of the time I had outside of work I was doing nothing but just slumping. Now don’t get me wrong, slumping can be my favorite activity at time, and there are many days after a hard week that that is all I want to do. However, it is not the kind of thing that I enjoy for weeks at a time. I had gotten so used to school taking all of my time and energy that when I didn’t have school work to be doing I had no idea what to do with my time.

Like I said before, it is still something I am struggling with this summer, but I do feel like I am starting to get a better hold on understanding the balance. I started doing things that I used to do in high school and just didn’t/don’t have time to do during the school year here. I often go to Boston Public Library and take out Chinese comic books to practice, I spend a lot of time getting back into Blender (a 3D animation software that I used a lot in high school), I have spent a lot of time dancing at different studios in boston as well as workshops being held by students on campus, etc. etc. etc. In a way I feel like I had forgotten these things were all an option to me. I had gotten so absorbed in school and my work that I had forgot that life has a lot of fun things to enjoy.

So in a few words, if you feel bad just slumping this summer, the answer is not always go and drown yourself in work. There is a precious balance between work and fun, both parts are equally important. It can be easy for the type of people that tend to want to go to schools like MIT to feel like the answer is always more work = more success. However, I have found though the people that work hard do do well, people that give themselves time to get away from work breath then come back often do just as well if not better ^_^

]]>Miscellaneous, Information, Prepare for MIT, Life & Culture,2017-07-06T21:56:19+00:00Ben O. '19Making the hard decisionhttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/making-the-hard-decision
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/making-the-hard-decision
I have always loved writing. I have always enjoyed the freedom of coming up with stories, making worlds that I wish I could live in, or bringing together thoughts about my own life to come up with a coherent narrative. On the visual arts side, I spent a lot of time doing Blender (a 3D animation program) when I had free time back in high school. For me it was a way for me to take the world that I know, and modify it in a way that made the world truly mine. However, despite my love for writing and 3D animation I believe my primary passion has always been cancer research. This made MIT almost a natural place for me to want to go, but the longer that I am here the more I have become aware that for many visual arts and writing was more than a hobby, it is a passion equivalent to my love for cancer research. As I have heard stories of friends, I have found a problem for incoming freshman that love literature or visual arts is "How do I decide between MIT, and an art school?" or "MIT and a school with a great writing program?" So, I decided to grab some friends that I knew had made this decision between MIT and another program, and ask them how they feel now that they are at MIT. (both of these friends are anonymous so if you would like to get in contact with them to ask further questions, please email me and I can try to get you in contact ^_^)

Literature

When I was young, reading was practically a health hazard. I’d read anytime and anywhere, despite the immediate perils in my surrounding environment. I distinctly remember my mom rolling her eyes at me every time I walked into a door with my nose in a book. How I didn’t break my neck going down stairs in the middle of Emily Windsnap or Maniac Magee or Ramona Quimby is beyond me. Stories were mine to have and hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do us part. You may now read the book (or this blog post, rather. I don’t know. This was a weird reference to make).

Fast forward to middle and high school. My favorite authors inspired me to try my hand at writing, and I loved stringing words together. Sentences are compact puzzles with endless solutions and no single right answer. When all the pieces fit, they have rhythm, a flow, an ability to make you think and see and question. I found I loved crafting stories, too — they were a way to grab handfuls of life and mold the directionless chaos into something meaningful.

In high school, I wrote constantly in a red journal. I submitted pieces to my school’s literary magazine, later became co-editor-in-chief, and even won a school award for a piece I wrote. Then came time for college. Adults stopped saying, “You can do everything you put your mind to!” and instead requested that I condense my interests and life goals into a choice of major. I loved writing, but I was also a science nerd (huge surprise, I know). I sent in my applications, heard back from schools, and screamed internally and out loud when I got into MIT. How could I say no?

One of the first things I learned as a student here is that you can’t be good at/do everything. When you’re young, there are a billion open doors you can walk through and explore, but at a certain point, you have to start closing them — especially when you have an intense academic workload, run on too little sleep, and must learn to manage your time. Everyone has certain doors, though, that they’re incapable of shutting. I decided to come to MIT and pursue bioengineering, but I did not want to give up on writing. This mission has been going okay so far. I joined The Tech, MIT’s student newspaper. I am now editor of its Campus Life section. I am planning on minoring in writing (either creative or science). I have enjoyed the writing courses I’ve taken so far, and I’ve met many a talented writer here.

Just so you know I’m not sugar coating my experience, here are the truths you’d expect from a school whose STEM reputation is as monolithic as MIT’s: there are few undergraduate students who choose to major in writing (MIT offers creative writing, science writing, and digital media majors and minors). There exist students here who belittle the humanities. The atmosphere is very much charged with an enthusiasm for STEM, which may hide the arts communities from public view. And there will be many times when you’ll be too busy or tired or stressed to work on anything but your psets.

Here are some truths that may surprise you about MIT: for every student who hates the humanities, there are a ton more who appreciate its value and understand its importance. MIT students are not just hardcore STEM nerds — I am friends with serious athletes, half the people on my floor are super into Dance Troupe, a friend on my floor is learning firespinning, my roommate plays six instruments (and is amazing at all of them, excluding the trumpet which she picked up this year), and so on. And though few undergraduate students choose to major in writing, a community of writers thrives. This community may be smaller than those in other schools, but it is alive and well. MIT has a literary magazine, Rune, a newspaper, a spoken word poetry club, a plethora of writing courses, and superstar professors. Our writing professors, including Junot Diaz and B.D. Colen, are Pulitzer Prize winners, bestselling authors, respected journalists, and more.

If you know you’re serious about writing as a life path, I might not advise going to MIT without quite a bit of thought and talking it over with a 21W major. MIT is likely not the best place to be if you know that writing is your dream, but this really depends on you. I have friends who are aspiring writers, and they do not regret their time here. I personally write and read less now, and it is difficult to do other things I enjoy during weeks when I don’t seem to have any free time. However, for those who are passionate about STEM and writing/the arts in equal measure, it is possible to do both at MIT. It will take energy, work, and introspection about what you want to prioritize in your life, but these are necessary ingredients for the pursuit of just about anything.

Here’s one final anecdote: the other day, I attended the Ilona Karmel writing prize awards dinner. In a cozy room tucked away in building 14E, students crammed around couches and tables with plates of Indian food and slices of cake (which was modeled after Margaret Atwood’s typewriter! I almost died when I saw it). The room was buzzing with conversation and energy and anticipation, and sitting in that room, I felt so grateful for this hidden gem of MIT’s population. Everyone there shared my love for words, and I didn’t feel out of place as someone who’d previously run into doors with a face full of book.

From the outside looking in — and even from the inside — MIT can be an intimidating place for aspiring writers. However, if you know there are some doors you just can’t close, you may be pleasantly surprised by what you find when you read between the lines.

Visual Arts

To be honest, I was pretty scared to write this blog post.
So much so, that I managed to put 3 weeks between when Ben asked me to write one, and when I actually made a blank google doc. I guess I have been afraid that when I actually let loose and press brains against paper, the resulting imprint would be something unhappy and morbid.

Okay let’s start over:
-Hi! I’m about to talk a lot about myself, and hopefully conclude with something relevant to you.
-I am course 6-3 (computer science major for those of you yet to be indoctrinated into the Institute's habit of numbering everything).My favorite living thing in the world is my dog Bean/Dou Dou (sorry everyone else).
-I would like to be a visual development artist someday. What is a visual development artist? S/he is the person who decides what the world of a movie, game, or tv show will look like before it is actually produced.
-(Here’s some awesome concept art: Lilo and Stitch, Tangled,Zootopia, emperor’s new groove, star wars, star wars, star wars, harry potter, guild wars 2, http://www.simonstalenhag.se/, moana)
-Really, it’s the coolest job in the world for people who like to draw, read, and daydream.
(a.k.a. me)

However-in-general-as-a-person-overall. I also enjoy solving problems and building things; in high school I was really into science olympiad, and at one point decided I loved ecology/biology after following a grad student around an evolution lab at U Chicago for a summer. I’ve always counted myself amongst the nerd crowd growing up, and never imagined I would be anything else than someone that builds things.

This changed when, as a junior in high school, I had the fortune to be able to take a summer art course on visual development; I spent 4 weeks developing a concept project built around a story I wrote, for which I designed characters, environments, props, vehicles, storyboards. It is hard for me to state how much that experience meant to me. It was as if I had been walking on my hands and writing with my feet my entire life, and someone came over and said “Hey, why don’t you try walking upside down?” And everything felt like it was meant to work that way. I tried to get back into academics the semester after that summer, but everything felt flat and uninteresting; I ended up spending a lot of time out of school that year, drawing things instead, trying to make a portfolio that would get me into a concept art/industrial design program that my parents would accept. I dropped all of my clubs; I quit science olympiad, science fair, etc etc and almost dropped out of honors classes to save time until my counselor refused to sign the form.

Somewhere in between this, I got into MIT. My dad cried.

To art school, I got rejected once (I applied secretly and was going to ask my parents if I could graduate high school early), and accepted once (during the normal application cycle). I cried.

The next fall, I came to MIT; I chose the dorm Senior House, where there are a lot musicians and artists, and was temped there during REX (dorm exploration week). I FYRE’d into Burton-Conner after REX ended. I told everyone it was because I wanted to live somewhere quieter, but it was really because I felt like I had to give up art if I was to take on MIT, and there were too many people there that I vibed with too hard. (Burton-Conner’s great and I love it and the massive family I’ve accumulated there, don’t get me wrong)

I spent most of freshman year trying to be an MIT student – or a least what I thought an MIT student should be. I tried to get internships, I took many course 6 classes, I tried to do too many things and burned out a bit, and I almost transferred to art school again; I ended up not because of a mix up in phone calls (that’s what I told myself and everyone else. It was really because I was still scared to do something I thought no one else was doing).

This continued to the first half of sophomore year (last semester); I interviewed at a gajillion tech companies with my heart half into it, before landing what would be considered a very decent position, at a very decent software company, with very decent compensation for next summer. Yet, for the rest of the semester, I found myself constantly, aimlessly logging onto job boards and filling out design applications that I knew I wouldn’t get. I went to Blizzard’s on campus interviews with a portfolio of concept art, even knowing there would only be technical interviewers coming. I would spend a semester unconsciously looking for a way out of this very decent, very respectable and favorable situation, in as much denial as I could muster.

Then this spring, a.k.a. right now; I took on a bunch of projects that were art and computer science; I became AR lead of the mural project in the tunnels, and began a UROP in the Media Lab where I got to do my own AR art project. One day, the supervisor for the internship I was supposed to do this summer emailed me this: “Our internship program this summer has been unfortunately canceled due to reorganization of the company”. I couldn’t feel anything but relieved. That was when I finally turned my head around, and looked up to confront the colossus of discontent that had been trailing behind me, dragging at my feet, ever since I got on campus.

Throughout all of this I kept feeling that I should be happy despite everything; I am at the coolest place in the world with access to so many cool projects - why can’t I just be enjoying this and diving in, instead of dithering over something I can do later? But the truth is, that just caught me up more - beating myself up for not enjoying something I ‘should’ be enjoying.

I think I knew from the beginning that I wanted to go to art school; but I was scared that if I went and it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I would have no way to get back to the ‘right way” of doing things (getting an undergrad degree, doing something technical and high paying in a respectable job). I also just never heard the words “I think you should go to art school instead of MIT”. My art teacher, the mentor I found in the visual development course, my parents, friends, etc all said otherwise; only one friend told me; hey I think you should just go to art school seeing as you’re dithering so much over something as big at MIT - clearly you don’t particularly want to go. But everyone else said, “You’ll never run into something like MIT again; you can always go back to art”.

And having been here for two years, I think that I have finally accepted that I should have gone to art school; I have come to terms with the fact that I don’t like computer science that much, I don’t like engineering that much, but that that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with me for feeling that way. This doesn’t sound like such a big realization, but somehow it took me 2 years of feeling inadequate and wrong before I finally got to it. So to people out here who are in environments or situations where you have to choose between 2 things, where one is unequivocally objectively better than the other, but you can’t manage to feel that way: your feelings matter more than what’s better. Not equal, not less; it matters more, because for the rest of your life, YOU will be in control of where your life goes. All that matters is how you feel about what you do. Doing what you’re supposed to do, so that your life is something that everyone around you wants - that won’t bring you happiness. Doing things that make you happy brings you happiness.

(But also, if that choice isn’t something within your reach right now, I also do want to let you know it is possible to be happy here as an artist. For me, because I am interested in purely art in particular, and have neither interest in new media and conceptual art nor all the theory based design that is around here nor building software, it was a much longer path getting there. But I have found that a lot of the Virtual and Augmented/Mixed Reality projects going on are really interesting. Making games is also really fun, if anyone reading this who is interested in cs and art hasn’t already, try making something in Unity! Or Processing! Or Blender! Computer graphics is also a really good field to get into right now. This guy also has the most inspiring and beautifully immersive computer science/art projects I have seen. All of his work is amazing, but especially check out way to go, reflektor, sprawl II, neon bible. My personal fave is blabla. That said, art here is very much design. All of the computer graphics classes here will teach you technical skills - how to build things, not what or why. I feel like I have not used my idea-making muscles for coursework in a long time. If you want to be an animator/concept artist/graphic designer/industrial designer - go for it as much as you can. Take it from me, someone who didn’t.)

]]>Miscellaneous, Information, Life & Culture, Majors & Minors,2017-05-17T15:53:22+00:00Ben O. '19Languagehttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/language
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/language
As an African American I have always felt left out when it comes to language, and to a larger extent culture. For many of my friends, language is the key to their culture; there was a big difference between my General Tso's chicken and my friends' 麻婆豆腐 ("ma po dou fu”) or my birthday party and my Hispanic friend’s quinceaneras. There was a realness, a distinct culture, a sense of history and background that I simply did not possess or understand. I felt like I was missing out on an entire world that everyone else seemed to have. This was further enforced by the fact that my community largely looked like me. A lot of us are poor, black, and had lost any long standing culture that our ancestors may have had at any point of time. We have no unique language, or holidays, or rituals. Of course we have genres of music, clothing, and stories that are unique to the African American experience, but there was nothing as tangible, nothing that I could undeniably call mine. I feel that for a long time I was okay with this because it was also true for everyone around me. None of my friends knew what country in Africa they are actually from. None of us knew what it means to have a flag that was truly ours. None of has had clothes to wear on culture or world awareness day. That was simply the world we lived in.

This dramatically changed when I began doing biology research my junior year in high school. For a long time I had been very out of touch with other ethnic groups because my school was about half white and half black. However, when I entered my research lab at Emory University I was very quickly confronted with a world of people I had never related to. A majority of the labs were largely Chinese or Chinese American, so as result, Chinese was the default language of the office. At lunch, I would sit and watch as my lab mates talk about their lives, their families, their work, in words that meant nothing to me. I felt lost. I wanted nothing more than to connect with my colleagues. To be able to understand why it is they thought the things they thought, said the things they said, felt the things they felt. To me a foreign language was and is more than just the translation of individual words; it is the physical embodiment of an entire culture, an entire world. The way that sentences are constructed reflect the culture of that language. Every thought, song, word, emotion, book, poem is articulated through the framework of language, and I wanted to see and understand another world more than anything.

After arriving at MIT in 2015 I immediately began my journey into learning Chinese. I would often study 4-5 hours a day. Not because I wanted a grade in the class, but because every second I spent studying bought me a little bit more of a new world that I could explore. I began to be able to listen to Uber drivers tell stories of travels from Hong Kong to the States; I got to hear about my lab mates’ first time in DC with his parents from Xi An; I helped with the struggles of my students from Beijing and Shanghai as they worried about their chances of ever entering an American university, and assisted an elderly man from Taibei around the MIT campus. Every one of these encounters is precious to me, and each one has allowed me to step into a world that I had not known even existed and would not have been able to see without my time in the Chinese Department here at MIT.

Being a Chinese student has expanded my view of the world in dimensions that I did not know existed. Before this, Chinese and pretty much any other language was only scribbles, incoherent sounds, and images that meant nothing to me and seemed to have no tangible impact on my life. However, I have found this to be as far from the truth as possible. Behind every sound and stroke of language is a story, and a meaning; a feeling, an idea, a world that is just waiting to be explored. This is a gift I cannot thank the Chinese department enough for helping me discover.

(Later to come, "why I have decided to take a year off from MIT and spend it studying Chinese in Shanghai")

]]>Miscellaneous, MIT Facts, Information, Life & Culture, Majors & Minors,2017-02-26T20:53:39+00:00Ben O. '19Thanks Guyshttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/thanks-guys1
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/thanks-guys1
This past weekend I was somewhere between flying and drowning. Finals were...... Finals. On the other hand I was about to be able to go home and see my family, and there was nobody I wanted to see more after a week of grueling exams. However, during this time I decided to take a break from the endless hours of studying and just go through some old pictures on my phone for nostalgia purposes and I came across this:

For those of you that haven’t gotten there yet, Chris always has some of the current bloggers do a Q&A session with the incoming class. We just sort of take some time to answer any random questions like “how often can you change your major, how is cooking for yourself, do we hate Harvard kids, where does the illuminati stay on campus, can someone major in a humanities, do you really have to learn major numbers” (answers: a zillion, awesome, LOL, to the left of the interdimensional door, YES YOU CAN #ChineseCourse20doublemajor, if you don’t learn them you will be sufficiently confused and won’t understand things like my awesome hashtag.)

For my year it was Connie and Shanasia, and if anyone is ever wondering what the illuminati thing is about for the class of 2019, it all started with Shanasia and a pretty innocent misunderstanding. For me personally, it was my first real interaction with MIT. For a majority of the college process the only interaction I had with schools were the interviews. However, during the interviews I was more focused on making myself seem worthy rather than trying to learn about the school. During the Q&A you also get to, in a way meet your classmates. Everyone that is accepted early is on that Q&A call and again for the second Q&A during regular decisions. Of course none of us get to actually hear each other, but we do get to be in this massive chat, and you get a pretty accurate view of what it would be like to be with all of your classmates. Think of it as the welcoming party.

A year later I, along with the other 19 bloggers, got to answer the class of 2020’s questions, and Kevin and I got to show up on this guy welcoming the class of 2020.

(Pay special attention to the comments on the right, because they are the truth.)

Being able to blogger is a special position. You are the realest connection between MIT and everyone on the outside. You get to hear people’s dreams, you get to see their aspirations, you get to be a part of their lives. As a blogger I have been able to meet people from India to Nigeria, from Singapore to Australia, from England to Mexico and got to hear what it is that everyone wants, what they are afraid of, while at the same time sharing with them what I was once afraid of, things I still don’t feel confident about. I have got to share dark parts of my life, and high points of my life. I can honestly say that I do not believe there is not a better position to bridge the gap between the inside and the outside of MIT. I have to thank you guys for taking time out of your day to come here and read the blogs, and sharing your lives with us. I want to say thank you for making the blogs the best job ever, and something that I never want to stop doing.

From a blogger to the greatest people ever,

Thanks Guys.

P.S. It really means a lot.

]]>Miscellaneous, Information, Prepare for MIT, Life & Culture,2016-12-28T00:37:10+00:00Ben O. '19Biological Engineering at MIThttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/biological-engineering-at-mit
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/biological-engineering-at-mit
MIT is, at the very least, interesting when it comes to biology. You will find there are two groups of people. There is group A that despises biology and if it weren’t for 7.01x being a GIR (a required class at MIT), they would never come anywhere near biology. Group B on the other hand is a mix of anxious premeds and kids trying to convince their parents that going to grad school can be just as rewarding as going to med school….. groupA>>groupB. I quite obviously fall into group B (the second half of group B, I thought I had convinced my parents that grad school would be cool, but they recently found that MD/PhD is a thing, so I still have a lot of persuading to do), I love biology and I spend a lot of my time telling my course 2 (ME), course 18 (math), course 8 (physics), course 16 (aero/astro) and very very very course 6 (EECS) fraternity that biology is a real science (I am the only course 20 in a group of 60ish so I have had a lot of interesting conversations at my fraternity about how T-cells are not testosterone cells. They are all super smart guys, they just don’t like biology).

Nevertheless, MIT leads the world in its biology research. The Koch, the Broad, the Whitehead, Picower Institute, etc. are all full of amazing minds that are truly changing the way that we see the mind, the body, and life itself. Course 20 itself is a pretty rare major. Most schools offer biology or BME (biomedical engineering), but there are very few Universities that will offer a biological engineering degree. I have found that biology is more basic science, things like figuring out what a protein does, how does this process work, if I induce this what will happen. BME is closer to MIT’s 2A-7 which is more of a device and prosthetics major, there is a lot of work in making things like MRI’s, CAT scans, neuroprosthetics, etc. However, biological engineering takes biological concepts and figures out how to apply them so, now that I know inducing this makes that how can I make a therapy, how can I use this protein as a marker for cancer detection, how can I simulate this phenomenon on a chip, etc. I entered the field of biology in order to make or find something that can change the way we treat cancer, so having a major that takes the information we have and finds out how to apply was exactly what I needed.

This semester is the first time that I am taking a course 20 class, so I cannot say a ton about how amazing or not amazing the course 20 classes are, but I can try to summarize what I have learned since I got here. What you will find as a course 20 vs a course 7 (biology) is that course 20 requires a lot more not so biology classes. So as a course 20 you are required to take 18.03 (differential equations) where as in biology you are free to stop at 18.02 (multivariable equations). You are also required to take 6.0001 and 6.0002 (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python and Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science) which is always a surprise to students at MIT course 20 and not. On the other hand you also take more basic chemistry and biology classes, things like 5.12 (organic chemistry), 7.05 (biochem), 7.06 (cell biology), and 7.03 (genetics). Actual course 20 classes are normally kind of are more mathy than bio classes, and more bioy than math classes, right now I am taking 20.110 (thermodynamics of biomolecular systems) which has been an amazing class and a super interesting way of looking biology, and next semester I will be taking the lab class 20.109 (Labaratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering).

Now outside of MIT I have quite a few thoughts on how I feel about the field of biology as a whole right now (fair warning before reading this part if you are not super passionate about biology this part is a little bit depressing and could discourage you. So decide for yourself if you want to keep reading, but if you do decide to read ahead you must read until the end). Biology (and to a lesser extent chemistry) has a very large amount of problems when it comes to research. I have only been working in labs for about 2 years total (a year hear and about a year in highschool), but my impression on what happens in thelabs has changed quite significantly since I first stepped into one. So I will address things that will undoubtedly pop up if you decide to go into the field.

So, in biology there are two really big fields that people go into, academia and industry. Academic research is done at a University and normally works towards exploring unsearched areas, novel ideas, and explanations to various phenomena. On the other side there is industry, this is composed of various companies (things like biogen, Novartis, etc.). In industry research is done with the purpose of making a profit and getting drugs that will make it to patients. Here, there is less of a move towards finding something new and more of a move towards making something that can be used. I will be addressing issues that appear in both Academics and Industry.

Money: One of the biggest problems with biology is that biology is expensive. A 50 microliter aliquot of a substance you need for an experiment can easily cost $300. Then there are analysis machines, pipets, bio hoods, incubators, robots, computers, etc. etc. etc. A lab is expensive, so a lot of the research that can be very much limited by how much the lab has. A lot of my friends can have a good idea and begin work on a CS startup as long as they have a few computers; however, if I ever wanted to make a startup, the entry cost could easily be $1 mil or more. This very much decreases the ability for there to be a large amount of interesting startups.

Publications: This is more of a problem in academia than there is in industry, but it comes down to the fact that publications is one of the only metrics that academia currently has for success. This creates a number of problems, the biggest of which is high impact papers with little to no impact. Basically, the end goal for a lot of people in biology is to become a PI (Principle Investigator) at some University. A PI is the head of a lab at a University. PI’s are the main decision makers for a lab and sit at highest position in academic research. Here the pay is good, you get your own lab, and you get to decide what that lab works on. However, in order to do this you must compete against all of the other Doctoral and Post-Doctoral students that all want this position. So, in order to get this position you need to have the BEST sounding papers, with the LARGEST impact, and you need a LOT of them. Given that a graduate student only has about 6 years to get their research done, and a post-doc only has about 2 years there is not enough time to get out a lot of really good papers that are done the “right” way. The only way to reach this high mass of paper is to skip repeating experiments, sketchy methods, and creating results that have little application to real life. An example of this would be finding a new chemical that can hold off cancer with low toxicity in different kinds of patients, but cost $2mil and 4 years to produce an ounce and has a shelf life of 3 days. This creates for a very high impact paper, but the likelihood of it ever getting to a patient is very low. Many scientist make this then move on to the next high impact paper with hopes of finally making it to PI. However, there are not very many other ways to do research if you ever want to become a PI, because if you don’t make high impact papers, no one will know you have done anything.

Post-Docs: A post-doc is again is more of an academic issue than an industry issue. A post-doc is a position that is normally required after graduate school if you want to become a PI. It normally last about two years and is basically a very smart very talented graduate student. However, there are a number of problems with the post-doc position. There is a very high number of people that have become stuck in eternal post-docs. Basically, every two years they move to another post-doc position and continue to apply to every open PI position open, but seem to have no luck. So, basically these are extremely overqualified individuals that are stuck with position and pay equal to that of a graduate student. It is also very beneficial for PI’s to hire post-docs, because they produce the best research for a price not much more than graduate students, so there is very little that is pushing PI’s to adjust the way that post-docs work.

Cures: One of the large problems in industry is the fact that cures are simply not profitable. The most profitable research is a product that will decrease the effects within a patient, but must be continuously taken in order maintain constant health. Cures on the other hand only call for a single use and no more. Given that industry invest around 15-80million dollars and about 7-15 years into R&D of a single drug, it only makes sense that they would only want to make something that can make their money back. If they do not make something in which they can make money, the business will very quickly run out of money and go under.

Monopolies: Though this is not a long term problem, when companies first put out a product they are given a license on that product for a given time that allows them to be the only people that produce that product. Therefore, for this given time, prices for drugs can be extremely expensive, because companies must make as much money during this license period, because after that period ends they must fight against competition. This makes it so that people that must rely on this new drug are forced to pay a large amount of money because there are no other companies making it.

Industrial Hierarchy: In industry, a large of the final decisions get to be made by businessmen who may or may not have a scientific background. This can make it very frustrating to be a scientist who is passionate about a project they are working on, but it is cut very early because it may not be profitable. It also means that scientist doing the research have very little say on what they are researching.

As someone that entered the field of biology in order to help people over anything else, these “red tapes” are very frustrating and something that is constantly on my mind. The reason I have stayed in the field is because I still want to help people, and I have decided that I will do everything I can to continue to do that. I have not figured out how I will surpass these boundaries, and honestly I have very little idea about I might change this system to make it better. Nevertheless, biology is still the field that at its very core has the power to heal those that thought there was no hope, and that is what I hope to find. I think if you want to be a biologist you must have a passion to put progress over money, fame, and recognition, at least for now. I think a lot of these problems have risen from an age old system that is long overdue for an update. So, I really believe it is up to the younger generation to begin a process of making this system a system that does what it was meant to do, and that is help people.

]]>Miscellaneous, Academics & Research, Information, Prepare for MIT,2016-11-20T23:01:25+00:00Ben O. '19Dreamshttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/dreams1
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/dreams1
For many people, the idea of "what do I want to be when I grow up" is a question that is easily answered when we are five or six (princess, tiger (shoutout to my little sister Mikayla), spaceman, firefighter, president, etc.), but as the time comes for us to truly decide what we are going to do with our lives the question becomes infinitely more difficult. As time goes on, it is no longer just a question of what you want to be, but also how much money will such a career much, does this career require formal education, if so how many years, do you need an MD, do you need a PhD, how often will I have to move, are there any jobs available in this field, etc. It is no longer a question that can be easily answered by just saying the first thing that comes to mind. There is time, thought, and effort that now has to be put into thinking about what is that you want to do for, potentially, the rest of your life. Even here at MIT this is a question that students struggle with. There are so many options that it can be hard to stick with just one. Nevertheless, due to an unfortunate series of events, what I want to be has always been pretty clear.

If you are new to the MIT blogs, mine in particular, there are a few things that you need to know about me before I continue. I lost my birth mother due to breast cancer in 2007. The day she died I promised her that I would do everything that I could to make sure that no one else had to suffer from cancer the way she did. That day, I began a binder full of cancer research wherever I could find it. That day, I decided that I would devote the rest of my life to cancer research.

As time went on after that, I would eventually run into an interesting word. I was in middle school when my eighth grade teacher gave us a list of words that we could choose from to do a research project on. I scrolled up and down the list until my eyes fell on the word “nanotechnology”. At the time I wasn’t very familiar with the concept, but it had the word technology in it. I felt that was about as close as I was going to get to anything math/science related in an English class, so I took it and hit the ground running. As I began to look into this tiny “technology” I began to realize its relation to medicine, specifically cancer.

Anyone who has known or loved someone diagnosed with cancer knows that chemotherapy treatment is one of the worst things a person can experience. As a kid I remember thinking that the “medicine” was doing more harm than the cancer was. Hair loss, weight loss, jaundice, etc. I hated everything that chemotherapy brought with it. However, during my seventh grade research project, I remember reading “If we can encapsulate chemotherapy drugs in nanoparticles we can kill the cancer without the side effects that are often very tightly associated with chemotherapy drugs.” It was then that I decided that nanotechnology was how I wanted to pursue cancer research.

After that project my scientific readings began to move towards how nanotechnology could be applied to cancer. My notebooks became full of things like “A cool nanoparticle that makes pointy Killer T-cells using RhoGTPases to adjust actin.” (Lol that specific idea was called “drill T-cells”) I would take these ideas to my biology teacher in high school, and she would look over and tell me what I might be doing wrong or how to improve my ideas, and I would go right back to the drawing board. I would read more papers on the new nanotechnology that was coming out, and how I could improve my ideas. There was one constant amongst many of the papers I read. Paula Hammond, Michael Cima, Sangeeta Bhatia, Frank Gertler, Robert Langer, (all MIT researchers) seemed to keep appearing in the papers that I read. In my head these people were what I had always wanted to be. These people had given their lives to research and to the end of cancer. I wanted nothing more than to be like them. I wanted nothing more than to be at MIT with them.

The second I got onto MIT campus, I began looking for a UROP. I was advised to wait until my second semester to begin a UROP, so that I could get adjusted to life at MIT first (good advice). Nevertheless, I settled on one with a Harvard graduate student at the Broad Institute in December that I would begin in February after IAP. It wasn’t at the Koch like I wanted, and it was kind of cancer research, but not really. I had just settled for the first real yes that I got. Fortunately, it fell through because there was no room in the lab. Looking back I was upset, but it ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to me. I ended up continuing my search for a UROP and finding one that I could do over the summer. It was at the Koch Institute, in nanomedicine, working on reducing chemotherapeutic side effects through nanoparticle encapsulation. I would be working under Dr. Paula Hammond, an amazing woman that had given me advice on what it would take to be a good nanotechnologist, and had told me that MIT would be a great place for college all the way back in eighth grade when I had visited MIT on a tour. I really could not have asked for anything more.

That is how I got where I am now. I have been at the Koch Institute all summer working on ovarian cancer nanomedicine. I am working under a fourth year graduate student on some cool combination nanomedicine development. Half way through, I got to sit in a meeting with Sangeeta Bhatia, Paula Hammond, Robert Langer, and Angela Belcher. I honestly almost died (#nerddreams). If it wasn’t for MIT, I know I may not have gotten this opportunity, especially not as a freshman.

Below is the first batch of nanoparticles that I created towards the beginning of the summer.

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To many it would just look like a weird liquid, and in all honesty it doesn’t really do much. It was a test batch of particle I made so that I could learn how to make nanoparticle without wasting a bunch of expensive particle. However, right after I finished taking this picture I broke down in the lab. It was pretty gross, not going to lie. I probably shouldn’t have been crying in a lab, everything in it already looks like water, I don’t know what kind of reactions I could’ve set off. However, this batch of particles meant the world to me. I had spent so many sleepless nights in my life just staring at the ceiling, tears rolling down my face, worried that I would never be able to keep my promise to my birth mother. I had spent so many sleepless nights reading paper after paper after paper, hoping that each one would bring me that much close to a cure to cancer. I had so many old scars on my hands from walls I would punch in frustration, when I couldn’t save a friend’s mother from dying of cancer, because I still couldn’t find the cure. I had so much weight on my back feeling that the weight of cancer was sitting on my back, and my back alone. However, that batch of particles showed me that I might just be capable of finding the cure that I had promised I would find. Having the entire Koch Institute working on the same dream showed me that I was not alone in this dream. That there were hundreds if not thousands that were with me in achieving this dream, and who knows, maybe one day we might just do it.

This is the graduate student that I am currently working under. One of the coolest and smartest guys in the entire world. He reached out and took a freshman for an entire summer, and I cannot thank him enough for continuously pushing me in the right direction.

The lab in which I am working in. A beautiful bench if I do say so myself :P

Says enough for Itself.

]]>Miscellaneous, Academics & Research, Information, Life & Culture,2016-08-22T18:39:39+00:00Ben O. '19Life of a Black Personhttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/life-of-a-black-person
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/life-of-a-black-personI would like to preface this by saying if you haven't read Vincent's amazing post "Black Lives Matter" (http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/black-lives-matter), read that first, then come back and read this post.

As many of you are aware, the racial tensions in America are currently at an all-time high. From the murder of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, to the tragic deaths of four hardworking police officers in Dallas, it feels like America is barely holding together. As events unfolded a number of questions presented themselves to both black minds and not:

"Isn't Black Lives Matter just a hate group? Shouldn't we be working to shut them down?"

"What about black-on-black crime?"

"Do you hate the police?"

"Aren't the police the real victims?"

"Don't all lives matter?"

I am sure these are a question everyone has seen at least once, if not a million times. Vincent's post showed some of the worst of what people like us have to deal with. I would like to say that I haven’t had to live through stories like his, but that would be lying to every one of you. Here, I want to try my best to share a few moments in my life that might help those with these questions understand why I believe a movement such as Black Lives Matter is one of the most important developments of my life time. These moments in my life are not extreme in the sense that I had to fear for my life, which was already beautifully covered by Vincent. These are the small subtleties that no one but a black person can understand. These are not huge events, just moments in my life. These are moments where I realized that unlike some of my friends, I am still not equal.

Summer before Freshman Year, Maryland:
"I believe that he should start with regular classes,"

The summer counselor looked over my middle school resume, nearly all A’s with a single B from Spanish 1 in eighth grade. I had just moved from Texas to Maryland, and I was going through a very familiar process.

“Why? He has nearly perfect scores. He ran extremely well on his cross country team, and has demonstrated above average ability in every subject and hasn’t missed a single day of school.”

My mom spoke with an icy frustration. My parents were not new to this process. At my first elementary school, they had to ask the school to not put me in remedial math, despite my perfect scores. At my second elementary school, they had to ask to put me in the gifted program, despite me scoring 50 points above the program’s requirements. And again in middle school, they had to ask for the school to not put me in the lowest classes. Their patience had long frozen over.

“Well, yes. He has done well, but don’t you think it would be better for him to start at the bottom and work his way up? We wouldn’t want him to be overwhelmed by a new environment.”

She tilted her head slightly to the side, and smiled. I could feel my mother’s hand squeeze tighter around mine. I could see the frosty frustration melt, and reveal behind it sat a fiery anger. My parents had left their homes and families in order to get a better education, so that my siblings and I wouldn’t have to “start at the bottom.” Yet here was summer counselor offering it to us like a present.

“I think it would be better if you put him in honors classes.”

We got up and left.

Fast food restaurant, GA:
“Whoa, you guys would make a fantastic football team!”

The older white man looked at my family as we ate our hot wings. My four siblings and I looked at him. I was the biggest of us at only 5’4” 110lbs (163cm 50kg) as a sophomore in high school. We were seven people short of an offensive line - five people short if you included my parents. My dad raised his left eyebrow, slightly annoyed.

“What about an amazing team of doctors?”

My dad spoke with a sense of urgency, looking the man in the eyes. My dad didn’t blink. He just looked at him.

The man laughed.

“Maybe a basketball team.”

Outside Walmart, TX:
“NIGGERRRR!”

Senior Year Math Competition, GA:
“You are a menace to this competition. I cannot believe your behavior. Where is your president?! WHERE IS YOUR PRESIDENT?!”

The proctor of the competition was red in the face. Sweat slid down his forehead down from the thin strands of hair that remained on his head. My girlfriend and I, the only African Americans at the competition of almost 300 students, both stood at the receiving end of his sweat, spit, and steam. Apparently, someone from our school had disturbed the competition. Of course neither of us were in the same room as the event, but yet here we were.

“Sir we are two of the team’s presidents.”

Over the last two years I had spent night after night studying the Art of Problem Solving, laboring over past exams, and helping lead our school to a hopeful math team victory. It was only this past year that I had been given the position as president. To me, someone that had never really been great at sports, music, or anything else of the sort, being recognized for my work in academics had meant the world to me. However….. That meant nothing right now.
“NO! WHERE IS YOUR PRESIDENT? SHOW ME YOUR PRESIDENT!”

He didn’t believe me.

“WHERE IS YOUR PRESIDENT! MOVE! I WILL FIND HIM MYSELF!”

He walked between the two of us, and straight to my school’s math team coach. After a short conversation, my coach looked at us, then the proctor, then waved us over.

“These are two of the school’s most hardworking presidents. If you have any problems, feel free to take it up with them.”

The man looked at the two of us, and it seemed he had lost all of his previous steam. He didn’t apologize, and apparently he was no longer angry about whoever might have really been a problem. He just left.

Time after time I have to come to face the fact that I am still not on equal ground to those that are around me. Time after time I have to face the fact that even after I leave MIT, I will be black first and whatever else second , if at all. Time after time I have to be aware of the fact that very few of my peers will ever understand a day in my life. Yet time after time I will do everything I can to fight for equality for my race. So next time a comment comes up saying “Racism is dead, they are angry over perceived slights.”, remember this post. Remember a little bit of what it is like in the life of a black person.

]]>Miscellaneous, Information, Life & Culture,2016-07-12T00:52:34+00:00Ben O. '191st Year at MIThttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/1st-year-at-mit
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/1st-year-at-mit
Hey guys, I first want to start off by apologizing for not being around recently. However, I will make it up to you guys over this summer and into the next year. I have a ton of plans to make sure you guys know what's going on both in my life and in MIT at general! (and one day I will get a camera so these videos won't have such terrible quaility lol).

So if you decided you don't want to watch the video I do want to write a little bit more about what my first year here was like. In the video I skipped explaining a few classes that I took this past year, so I want to explain those a little bit more here.

So, one of the classes that I feel I did really enjoy here was 5.111, fundamentals of chemical principles. I think the thing I really enjoyed about this class was its ability to make sure you didn't feel like you were just retaking AP chem. For me I feel like there were a lot of concepts that I had at least looked at before, but almost none of them in as much detail as we looked at in class here. I think by taking AP chem before it did help me as far as being able to recognize concepts, but I do feel that even if you hadn't taken AP chem you would not feel left out. The class has a nice balance of new information combined with enough old information that I never felt too lost.

This year I also took 8.01 and 8.02. Though they are both physics I think I looked at each one in a completely different way. 8.01 I think I felt I had done before in AP Physics C as well as the fact that it was Pass no Record so I did not spend a lot of time studying for that class. However, as usual that was a terrible idea. At the end of the first semester I had to scramble a lot to make sure I could keep up with the class, and because of that I feel like I did not enjoy the class as much as I would have given that I had just started studying from the very beginning. However, when 8.02 did come around I think I was more ready, I knew what to expect and because of that not only did I find the class to be a little bit easier I think I just enjoyed it more overall!

Lastly, I had my CI-H which I actually loved a ton! It was basically just a writing class on how to write an autobiography. So we for every class there was a few pages we would have to read from different autobiographical authors, and then we would talk about them in class. As with most CI-H classes, we were required to write three papers that totaled to 5000 words. I think the class was nice because of the fact that I had so much room to really write about anything, and for the most part I feel that my best writing comes when I really care a lot about the subject. I obviously care a lot about the events that have occurred in my life time so I feel some really good writing came out of that class.

This year I also joined a Christian group on campus. ACF or Asian Christian Fellowship, how I ended up in that club as an obviously not Asian student is a wholeeee story on its own (Hopefully I can write a blog about it sometime soon). Either way, in joining the club I think I was able to make a very good group of friends there as well as continue to follow my religious beliefs. The group is super open to anyone and are probably some of the most genuine people I have met since coming to MIT. For the most part I spend about three days with ACF, one on Sunday going to church, another on Wednesday going to my small group, and the third on Friday going to large group. From time to time we also just go get food together or go to the movies, but all in all it is an amazing group and if anyone else would like a little more on what the religious groups are or what it is like being Christian on campus I can definitely do a blog post on that too!

When it comes to just what I did in my free time there was a ton of things to do. I was on TV once (again a whole other story in its own right), there are parties literally every Friday that I would go to maybe once every other week or so, going to the movies was a pretty popular past time, and then there were things like going to dinner or China town. All in all, I feel like when I had time to do these things I had balance. It felt good to do these things because I felt like I was not working 24/7. I would say free time definitely would arise the most on Saturdays. Fridays, I either went to a party or was just too tired from the week to want to go out and do something. However, on Saturday I felt that I had enough time to both get some psets done, and still do something else. I would like to say that I had free time after an exam, but more often than not I would spend so much time studying for that one exam that I would get behind on psets. So, after the exam I would have to hop on getting the psets that I had fallen behind on done. Either way, it is always possible to be working on something at any given time, but if you consciously try to put aside some time to be free it is definitely doable.

So yeah, that is about all I have for you guys on my first year. Think of this blog as kind of a predraft. If there is something you want some more of I can definitely try to add it, and if I don't add it I will either respond to you on a one on one or maybe write a separate blog post for the subject!!! Have a great summer guys and see you all soon!!!

]]>Miscellaneous, MIT Facts, Academics & Research, Freshman Applicants, Visit, Information, Life & Culture,2016-05-29T01:01:29+00:00Ben O. '19Acceptancehttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/acceptance1
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/acceptance1To a lot of people, myself included, getting into MIT is the dream we have worked for years to finally reach. This is just a little excerpt on me getting into MIT and why it meant so much to me. Enjoy!!!!

Finally. I sat on my bed silently. My fingers were numb and my breaths were shallow. I would look at the time on my phone, then on my laptop, then on my phone again. My head seemed eerily quiet, but not empty. It was as if my mind had exceeded capacity, and there wasn’t enough oxygen for each thought to speak. I checked my phone. 2 minutes left.

Not yet. I was starving. The last time I tasted anything besides water had been two days before. I was hoping fasting would bring me some sort of ease about what was to come, and it had, until now. I thought that through my fasting I had transcended fear and accepted that what was to come was unavoidable; however, it was all for naught the moment my efforts would matter most. I had long stopped feeling hunger, but the void in my stomach seemed to swallow any sort of intelligent thought that had survived the oxygen deprived wasteland in my head. I checked my laptop again. 2 minutes.

I looked up only to meet 6 sets of eyes. Each set seemed to reflect upon their waxy exterior a different emotion: boredom, support, nervousness, belief, fear, and that emotion, that feeling that you just want to go back to whatever it was you were originally doing, but can’t because you are obligated by social norms to stay right where you are. I looked desperately into the darkness of the jet black irises hoping that I might be able to find some sort of understanding. Someone that could hear the oxygen deprived screams of my mind, but they couldn’t. Honestly, if these eyes would do nothing, but sit above me acting blind to the tears that wish I could cry, then I would much rather them leave me alone and allow me to suffer without their judgement. However, I was obligated by those pesky social norms to act as if I appreciated their presence. So instead, I responded by moving the corner of my mouth slightly towards my nose. That should be enough to keep the eyes from thinking I had died. Back to my phone. 1 minute to go.

The air around me was completely still. Instead of comforting me with a gentle breeze, it simply sat with hands on my neck looking over my shoulder at the computer screen. The sun was having a joyous time dancing along my back in its high heels, stabbing my skin with its piercing heat. Below me my bed had decided to become a rock. I honestly have no idea how, I am not a bed scientist. My bed had been with me for 15 years, and honestly, I had decided to stop arguing about when it should be a rock and when it should be a bed. I just sort of let it be it. Laptop check. 1 minute.

Something instantly changed within my head. My thoughts had evolved to become purely anaerobic, and with their newfound trait they began to flood my mind. They rushed into every unoccupied space of my body demanding that every surface within me know what it felt to lack the oxygen that was so often taken for granted. There were two types of thoughts, those that were for me and those that were against me. The call I had gotten two days earlier, teasing me with the idea that I might have some sort of chance, for me. The results of my last exam, I had done well, but that meant nothing when all they would take was great, against me. My summer adventures, the time I felt for once I was beginning to make some sort of impact of this world of mine, for me. Me being just me, me just being yet another ordinary kid living an ordinary life hoping that something extraordinary might maybe possibly happen to me, against me. These thoughts would flow in time with the ever increasing beat of my heart: positive, negative, positive. The thoughts did not cease, but due to their neutralizing nature I felt no better or worse about my current situation, I just felt overwhelmed. I had hoped that my stomach would continue sucking in the thoughts that would leave my mind, but it had decided it was no longer hungry. As with my bed, I just sort of let it be it. Phone check. No change. 1 minute left.

I looked around the room hoping to find something to occupy my parading thoughts. A binder. My binder. It sat on the floor, calling out for me. It had a hard white outside scattered with particles of brown dirt, and a front flap that was now more bent than straight due to being stuffed far beyond its intended capacity. Inside there were two notebooks, a black five subject spiral, and a green single subject with the words “Questions of Life” written on the front. Both were slightly tattered, containing wrinkled pages from water damage and small stains from various foods. Neither of the two books were full, but the amount of writing per page was twice that of a normal sheet of paper. Along there pages were scribbles of chemical compounds, biological makeups, drug delivery ideas, and of course “Questions of life”. After flipping through the notebooks, one would be met with a fleet of papers, each new paper being marked with a worn yellow post-it note at the top of the first page. The first paper sat within a mangled page protector that had not done its job very well. The paper was black along its edges from strange particles that had easily slid through its not so protecting covering. The paper itself looked much like the pages of the notebooks, full to the brim with scribbles of hopeful ideas that would pop into my mind, or explanations to words I didn’t understand. Along the lines of the paper ran streaks of orange highlighter that would identify text I deemed particularly important; therefore, the whole paper was almost entirely orange. The pages that followed mimicked the first. Though not in page protectors, the poorly printed papers that followed all had the same orange highlighter sliding across the text. Each page was individualistic, slightly different from the page that sat next to it. Some had holes punched on the wrong side, or an extensive amount of my own writing, or none of my writing at all, or an author whose name was circled, or an images that were printed in color. After flipping through an eternity of pages, one would then reach a paper with an orange post-it note. My paper, my proudest accomplishment, my one contribution to the world I wished to be a part of. Unlike the others, this paper did not contain orange highlighter, nor my handwriting. It was not wrinkled or stained. It sat crisply in the back of an army of papers simply staring at me, my name sat proudly in bold at the front of a line of far more qualified names. At the end of my last name sat a little 1, a number I felt I didn’t deserve, but would wear with the upmost humility. This paper was special. This paper was the one thing I felt showed that I was truly fulfilling a promise I had once made to someone I loved. Laptop check. 1 minute.

The binder was born November 21, 2007. The same day breast cancer took my mother’s life. The same day, hours before her death, that I promised her I would find a cure to cancer. My binder was that promise. A promise I had made almost a lifetime ago to someone that I loved more than life itself. A promise that was made to someone that was no longer around to see this binder be filled, or to see what was to come in the minute, or to tell me I should calm down, breath, and believe that was to happen was meant to happen. A promise I would fulfill no matter the circumstances that faced me. A promise that I felt could only be realized if in the next moment I could achieve the impossible. Phone check. 0 minutes left.

My heart decided to mimic my bed and turn into a rock. I couldn’t breathe, my fingers froze as the time seemed to stare me down as if to say, “Yeah, I’ve been coming for you.” However, I was ready. I was terrified, I was hungry, but I was ready. I typed in my name slowly. My brain no longer possessed the ability to use all ten fingers to type, so it had resorted to the “single finger poke method.”

B E N O B E R L T O N.

Enter.

The screen refreshed, nothing had changed. I looked at the time again, time zero was still smirking at me. Had I made a mistake? My hands were shaking so fast that even the single finger poke method was slowly failing me.

B E N O B E R L T O N.

Enter.

Again the screen did not change. My heart had decided to stop mimicking my bed and to start mimicking my hands instead; my stomach just wanted to throw up all of the thoughts it had taken in. Laptop. -1 minutes.

What the heck was wrong? I couldn’t think, nothing was going through my mind. Absolutely nothing, it was just white. One more time. I had to stop breathing and blinking to muster up enough brain power to type in the code on more time.

B E M no N O B E R L T O N.

Enter.

The screen refreshed. This time with a letter. Again my heart reverted back to my bed. I had almost forgotten how to read at this point, but I knew I had no choice, so I compromised by reading every other word. “Benjamin-behalf-the-Committee-is-pleasure-offer…….”

Mom, it looks like I might just be able to keep that promise I made to you.

In the back is the binder that I describe, and the open is binder is new one that I am starting now that I am here at MIT, and in all honest, the other one is getting kind of full.

]]>Best of the Blogs, Miscellaneous, Freshman Applicants, Information, Process & Statistics, Life & Culture,2016-03-05T17:31:15+00:00Ben O. '19My “Normal” High Schoolhttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/my-normal-high-school1
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/my-normal-high-school1
Now, I can be pretty sure that most everyone applying to MIT has a number of things that they are worried about. Grades, SAT scores, the amount of extracurricular classes taken, etc. etc. etc. At times it seemed like I could have found a cure to cancer, ignorance, AIDS, made an organization for lost orphaned baby whales in the middle of Africa, speak Spanish, Chinese, Klingon, and Gibberish, get a 3250 on my ACT and still not got in. However, even though these were all factors, they were all things I felt like I could control. I could study hard and get grades and I could apply myself to my clubs and obtain a high position; however, the one thing I felt like I couldn't control was my high school and honestly....... It terrified me.

When I looked at students that got into schools like MIT I felt like they came from one of two categories. In group one there were students that went to prestigious high schools with award winning math and science programs and a history of sending students to big schools. In group two there were students that came from underfunded schools that seemed to make it almost impossible to succeed. Yet despite their situation, these students put in an immense amount of work and were able to overcome their circumstances. However, what I never seemed to hear of was students coming from some random middle class suburban high school, and weirdly enough that’s where I found myself. It was one of the only factors I felt I could do nothing to change and honestly…… It terrified me.

Now before I continue I am not bashing my high school, nor any other middle class suburban high school. In fact I loved my high school. No matter where I went or what I decided to do, my school's faculty was behind me. If I was really curious about the double gate experiment, my chemistry teacher would be more than willing to spend a lunch period just going over hypothetical situations. If I was working on trying to come up with some new cancer idea, my biology teacher would spend more than an ample amount of time responding to early morning emails telling me where I might have potential flaws in my ideas. In fact for Christmas, some of the faculty used their own money to get me a biology textbook and Feynman’s lectures on Physics because they knew that there was nothing I loved more. I loved the faculty at my high school, they truly cared about my education and were more than willing to entertain what I would consider an “annoying” curiosity, and for that I am thankful. Nevertheless, I believed there was one large flaw in my school, there seemed to be an overall lack in drive….. It terrified me.

In all honesty I don’t think I would have noticed my school's lack in drive if I hadn’t gone to two different high schools, and that’s why I hope to be able to share this information with you guys!!! I spent my freshman and sophomore year of high school in a pretty competitive place. It had a few Ivy League kids a year, a pretty awesome debate team, but more than anything it had driven students. The kids at this high school worked non-stop to hopefully step foot into an Ivy League school one day, and honestly I respected that. However, when I had to move high schools for my junior and senior year, though I was surrounded by some of the most caring and genuine faculty in the world, I felt there was an overall lack of this drive in students. Now, of course I cannot make a statement like this without saying that this is not a statement about my entire high school. During my junior and senior year I was fortunate enough to meet kids who honestly wanted to change the world, whether that be through bringing energy to Africa, changing the way people saw the world through photography and theater, or by helping end sex trafficking worldwide, I truly did meet some amazing people while I was in high school. However, I think the one thing that bothered me was the mentality of the class as a whole…… It terrified me.

Honestly I think one of the biggest problems with the middle class high school system is there is absolutely nothing wrong with being in the middle class, and in my opinion I feel this creates a feeling of complacency. Students in the high level high schools are surrounded by students, parents, and teachers all supporting them and pushing them to go to the best school possible, and therefore it creates a drive in these students to do the best they can. In the underfunded schools students seem to be unsatisfied with where they are and hope to change their circumstances, so an unending drive to do better is built in them. However, as I said before there is nothing wrong with the middle class, there is nothing forcing students to “shoot for the top.” For many nothing would satisfy them more than to get into the local state school. Now I cannot stress this enough THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS. Anyone who put in the time and the effort to go through another four years of schooling deserves respect no matter the name of that school. However, what I found sad was hearing a sentence that went like this:

“Yo Ben I have this idea for ‘insert idea here’”
“Woah ‘insert name of person here’ you know what has a really good program for a school like that ‘insert name of a high ranking college’”
“Lol no way, why work super hard to get in there when I could just stay here”
or the one that would really make me cringe
“Hehehehe………. No way I am smart enough for that, but nice joke”

I cannot count the number of how many times I met students that had an infinite amount of potential to not only get into a good school but flourish there; however, due to circumstance, felt no need to reach for anything higher than what was already comfortably within their reach, or felt they did not possess the ability to go beyond what was immediately around them.

I think this fact really hit me when I went to take my SAT subject tests. In my county of maybe 15 high schools there were only 5 locations to take the SAT and only two of those locations were near my school. When I went to take the SAT there were only two kids taking the subject test, me and another kid from my school. This happened not only once but twice, both the first and second time I took subject tests. I guess it really surprised me because a large amount of the high level colleges strongly recommend if not require these tests, yet in a whole county only two students were taking the tests. To me I guess it just said that in the entire county not many people felt they had the ability to get into good schools, and I truly felt there was nothing further from the truth.

So Ben what are you getting at with this blog post???
Well little reader, who might or might not be little, I guess I am writing this blog post for a lot of people going to an ordinary high school or maybe feel they have no chance in getting into a school like MIT because they don’t think they are “smart” enough. Please don’t let the circumstances you are in, or the people you are around tell you what you can or cannot do. For me I honestly did not believe I could get into MIT. I didn’t get first in IMO (heck I didn’t even know what IMO was), I didn’t meet the president by winning the IBM science fair, or anything ridiculous like that. Nevertheless, I had it set in my heart that I could go to MIT if I worked hard enough, and look here I am. Nothing more than some normal kid from some normal high school. As corny as the line is, if you really believe in yourself there is nothing stopping you from achieving anything you want to. I can’t give you the “key” to getting into MIT, but I think having a little faith in yourself can definitely help ^_^

]]>Miscellaneous, Freshman Applicants, Information, Prepare for MIT,2016-01-16T23:50:25+00:00Ben O. '19Tips and Tricks to MIThttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/tips-and-tricks-to-mit
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/tips-and-tricks-to-mit
Honestly, I think if you ask anyone at MIT, there is something of a learning curve. By learning curve I don't mean "oh snap it is going to take me long time to learn all of these new subjects at MIT." It is more of a general statement that sort of goes under the idea that you are now living alone, if you are not on the meal plan you have to make your own food, you now have the decision to go to class or not go to class, you are more or less completely autonomous. (oh snap almost forgot, quick disclaimer, I am still a freshman and I am not claiming to know everything ^____^ I am just trying to share a little bit of what I have learned, I hope you can enjoy that!). No one can move from living in a house to on their own in one day and have no problems, so hopefully these tips and tricks can help! So without further ado let’s get started!!!!!!

1. SLEEP HOMIE SLEEP
Alright this is something that you will hear 500 billion times, and honestly something I have not yet mastered hahaha. When I was in high school I was like, “College students have like 3 classes a day that start in the middle of the day, instead of getting up at 6:45 like in high school you, college students don’t have to get up until around 9 or 10 and get out at like 3, how do you not get enough sleep?” To little high school Ben I say that is a very good point. Except little high school Ben, you are wrong. One of the things about college is if you do not limit yourself there is no reason you can’t work 24/7 without stopping. There is always technically a pset that could be worked on or a test the next week you could be studying for, or a UROP you could be working on, etc. etc. etc. Now, I am not saying “yes when you get into MIT do nothing but sleep.” I am also not saying “yes when you get into MIT do nothing but work.” However, sleep is important. My friend told me “At MIT time is actually money. You have $24 and in one day you must decide how to spend that money, always save 6-8 dollars for sleep. It will be the best investment you could make.”

2. Go to class
This one may not be for everyone, but it is definitely a rule that I have found to be true for me. The reason being is I convinced myself that I will spend my time that I would be in class to do psets, find the notes on Open Course Ware and review those, or get some sort of work done. LIESSSSSS. There may be people out there that have far more self-control than I do and therefore this is an option. However, if you are not 100% sure that you can make use of your normal class time to do something productive, 9 out of time the only thing that will happen is you will fall behind. Regardless, If you find that you have to miss a class to study for a test or you just really really really need to get some sleep try to find a friend that can take a video of the class or at least get you the notes for that day's lecture.

3. PNR
I am going to take a leap of faith and say that most of the people applying to MIT are good students. In this regard we are naturally very hard workers. For many of us simply going for the A isn't good enough, we are going for >98%, and therefore put in a very large amount of work to everything we do. However, that then transfers to our first semester here at MIT. For those of you that don't know, the first semester at MIT is on something called PNR which stands for Pass No Record. In every class for the first semester there are no real grades. If you pass the class you get a P and if you don't pass the class then it disappears off of your transcript as if you didn't take the class. Now, because of that it gives freshman a chance to adjust to MIT, spend some time in extracurriculars, and take off some of the stress that comes with being a student at MIT. Lol, but I have found, me included, that many freshman still aim for that 98% in every class. That is amazing and something I will definitely say is wrong, but I would like to say one of my regrets for my first semester here is working way too hard. I spent a lot of my time studying trying to get that super high grade when there was no difference between a 90 and a 73. I have 3 and a half more years to give everything I have to MIT, there is nothing wrong with relaxing for the first semester. Now, I am not saying lose that hard working spirit, that is an integral part of being a student here, but as hard as it is for people like us, there is nothing wrong with spending some time relaxing and hanging out with friends every once in a while.

4. Try Everything
This one sort of goes in conjunction with #3. Literally try everything, Since we have PNR as freshman you can go and try something new, revisit something you love, or just go to a random place and be like "wassup....... idk what this is but I want to try it ^_^ " I would say here at MIT it is far better to try too many things, extra curriculars lol I don't think I can say the same thing about classes, and cut down the things you don't have time for or don't like than it is to restrict yourself to one thing and not explore everything that MIT has to offer.

5. Get Some Air
MIT can get a little overwhelming from time to time, and I will give this little tip in the form of a story. I was kind of stressed one night, the 18.02 pset wasn't making any sense, I had a 8.01 pset and 7.015 test the day after the 18.02 pset was due, and it was only Monday lol and because of this I wasn't getting any work done I was just stressing. So, I asked a friend if I could borrow their bike. Back at home whenever I got stressed I would go driving, but since I don't have a car here I felt that a bike would be a good substitute. I rode her bike into Boston and just rode everywhere. I took pictures of the buildings, some awesome cars, looked at the inside of Tom Brady's house, tried to get into some tall buildings, but it was like 1 in the morning and they were all locked, I met some really cool fire fighters and got dinner with them <- a story for another time, and was just kind of relaxed. I came back maybe an hour or two later and felt awesome. I got everything I needed to get done that week. Went to office hours and figured out 18.02, got through 8.01 pset and did pretty well on my 7.015 test, I just needed to relax a little. There is nothing wrong with that. (I would share with you guys the cool pictures I took, but I recently broke my phone and with it went all my pictures T-T).

These are just a few things I have found while I have been here. As I said before, these are just my experiences and somethings may work better for some and not so well for others. It takes some time to find your rhythm at MIT, but give it some time and you will eventually be able to find how to make the best of this place!

"Yes I said etc...... Just don't think about it to much (oh and I'm working on getting a better camera so apologies ahed of time)"

I am not sure if you guys have the same feeling, but sometimes you just have those times where everything just feels right. There might not be anything especially special about the moment that you are in, but nevertheless every piece of your life seems to fit into the right spot. You tripped over your foot and successfully landed a perfect front flip recovery, your girlfriend exists (lol), and you walked into your AP Physics test, looked it dead in its pale, white, papery face and said, “I will defeat you,” and then proceeded to do so….

When I came to MIT as a super cool 8th grader (because don’t we all feel that way in 8th grade) that is the exact feeling I had. I would like to give you guys the exact word to perfectly describe how I felt when I first put foot on campus, but sadly I don’t think such a word exists. I’d felt that MIT was a place for me. The buildings seemed to be the embodiment of innovation, the students I saw walking around campus had done what so many high school students strived for each and every day, and my meeting with a Professor Hammond gave me the feeling MIT students actually have limitless opportunity. To me MIT was Heaven on Earth.

Now let me be completely honest with you guys for like 2 sec. I have visited schools that were physically more beautiful. Look as a blogger I feel slightly obligated to tell you guys otherwise, but I would feel bad lying to you coolest people on the planet (If you have interest in this school, you are in this group of “coolest people” If you do not have interest in this school………….. lol jk those people don’t exist). But in all seriousness out of all of the colleges I visited, MIT was the only college where I truly felt at home. While I visited other colleges I constantly found myself thinking things on the lines of “Woahhhhh this school would be awesome for (some person that is not me).” Now that does not mean that these other schools were not amazing in their own respect, but in honesty they just simply were not the place for me. They were like that best friend you have that is super awesome and would totally be dateable except you just don’t have that “I like you in that kind of way ;)” vibe. In my mind I would not be happier anywhere else other than MIT.

The insane need to attend MIT was one of the core aspects that caused me to work hard in high school. I would just dream of one day being able to live in my “Heaven on Earth” and 4 years later that happened; however, unexpectedly things changed for me once I had finally reached the end all be all (Now things might sound bad now, but little *spoiler* if you keep reading all the way to the end they get better. Now if you are like me and hate spoilers don’t read this excerpt….). After getting to MIT and living here MIT slowly just became another place to me. I was getting so caught up in psetting, going to classes, just hanging out with friends, and things of that nature that MIT was losing its heavenly status. It is like when you eat your favorite food all of the time it just doesn’t seem to taste as good as it used to. Now MIT was not becoming a place that I hated, it wasn’t even a place that I disliked, I still loved being here, but I was not acknowledging that fact. MIT was simply just a place I happened to live; it was no different from any other place I could potentially live. The scariest part of this gradual change for me was that…… I had no idea it was happening.

(*spoiler* here comes the happy climb back up :P again if you don’t like spoilers please don’t read this excerpt). About a week ago a friend of mine that was a senior at my high school came and visited MIT for the WISE program. Through this program he was able to come to MIT and live with a student, take classes, and just get a feel of what it means to be an MIT student. During his time here all I did was rant about how amazing MIT was. I wouldn’t shut up about how much I loved late night psetting with friends, how much I respected my professors for taking time from their genius to teach me, how much I enjoyed hanging with my new fraternity brothers, and of course how awesome it has been being able to share my love with the world via blogs. I actually would not shut up. I feel like at some point he was giving me that “I don’t really care what you are saying, but it’s like 3 in the morning and social norm requires me to smile and act like what you are saying is interesting….. But for real Ben I have to get some homework done” face, and it was then that I realized that MIT was still my heaven on Earth.

Now Ben what are you getting at with this story of yours??? Excellent question my little prefrosh I will tell you. Sometimes it is wayyyyyyyy too easy to take for granted the opportunities we have. For me that was MIT. However, once I got here I began to get complacent and started to forget that I have been given one of the most amazing openings to change the world. Now if you are sitting there like, “lol Ben I haven’t got in yet so I can’t yet get complacent this does not apply to me,” you are……. probably really sleepy or something lol because think about it. Every single one of us has something in our lives that has become so integrated that we forget how special that something is. Whether that’s an opportunity to have parents that can afford an amazing high school so that you can get every bit of education you need to get into a good college, or it is simply the fact that we wake up in the morning and we can walk to our closet and have clothes, we all have something in our lives we should be grateful for. So you know what would be cool???? Lol take a little bit of time to just say “Thank You” to someone or something that you are grateful. For me that is my parents, for well everything lol, and to MIT, for truly being my heaven on Earth.

P.S. Saying thank you to MIT as a whole is a little bit harder than I thought…. Kind of just went up to a wall and was just like “thanks bro” *fist bump* (regrets punching wall immediately).

Now for picutres of how beatuiful this place is:

"Thanks MIT"

"The secret roof library... not that secret but I didn't know it existed"

"How can you look over the charles river and just not be happy"

]]>Miscellaneous, Freshman Applicants, Information, Prepare for MIT, Life & Culture,2015-10-28T21:13:32+00:00Ben O. '19When Friends Become Familyhttp://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/when-friends-become-family
http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/when-friends-become-family
I am not sure about the rest of you guys, but when it comes to me I have a good amount of friends, but more often than not they are simply acquaintances. However, I do have a very small amount of special people in my life I can consider true friends. There are those people in your life that you respond to questions like “Did you think my mixtape was fire” with something like “haha that was honestly as hot as MIT will be in December, I am going to go get some food. Do you want some? Wait, nevermind, get your own food…… Oh and I took your iphone earlier because my phone was dead….. And I dropped your phone in the toilet. Sorry…. But not really.”

Now obviously if someone is like that to their “friends” we have two different definitions of the word. However, you know what I mean. They are simply people you can just be comfortable around because you have been so close for so long. You can talk about anything for hours, or you can say nothing and it isn’t awkward. Those people you can genuinely say are friends.

Normally this category stayed around something like 1-3 people for me. It was never a large number due to the fact that I moved quite often so, I never really got the chance to get superrrr close to people. This didn’t mean I didn’t have friends ( I did, I was insanely popular ;) ), but I just wasn’t that close to that many people. In all honesty, I thought things would be the exact same when I came to MIT. I would have a good amount of friends that I could go get lunch with, or maybe have a decent conversation with, but that’s not what I got at all. I would put these families into two groups: My dorm family and my new brotherhood.

For you guys that don’t know I live in the #1 dorm on all of MIT campus #BURTONCONNERORDEATH lolllll…. The best and only way I can describe Burt Conner is that it is the building equivalent of Barney Stinson (If you haven’t watched How I Met Your Mother you really should stop here take a few minutes and watch every episode). It seems very nice being on west campus snugly between Baker and New House, and you walk up to it like oh this seems like a nice building, but the more you slowly realize it is wayyy more than what you see at first. It is made up of basically any and every personality, and has the potential to take on each of these personalities to get the girl (in this case the girl here in this “quickly becoming complicated” metaphor is graduating from MIT. Think about it for a sec….. It makes sense just don’t think about it too much.)

(Sadly, this post isn’t really about Burton Conner as a whole. However, if that is what you are looking for check out this link).

Alright, I kind of got off on a tangent in that last paragraph, but I am back now lol…. My family that’s what I was talking about. Haha……. Okay yeah sooooo what you realize when you get to MIT is that you will never grow closer to a person, or people, than when you are up at 3 in the morning working on an 18.02 pset that has decided not to let you sleep. There is something special about a common struggle at an uncommon time. When these two factors come together something happens. People become genuine. It is wayyyy to early in the morning to keep up a “oh hi there I don’t know you that well” façade. In addition, there is still a common goal. This common goal brings together people when they are truly open. No longer do we respond with “Of course I will help you move your 5 room apartment at 7am, because we aren’t that close and that’s what friends are for.” Instead you get things like “lol oh look Ben is trying to make a video let’s all wave our hands through the camera” -___________- lol it is at these times when I am sleepy, slightly hungry, tad bit annoyed, and a little bit weird that I have come to grow closer with my floor than I have gotten with people that I have known for 20 times as long. I have truly come to love my floor, plain and simple, they have become my family and I wouldn’t replace that for any amount of sleep hahaha.

My Family:

Pay close attention to the back wall.... If you see any artistic differences as you scroll down....
They are due to this girl.

"I am wearing flip flops because the rain socked my socks."

"I don't know what you want me to do."

I like to call this picture "MIT students in their natural habitat"

What p-sets will do to you..... Lol jk this is what happens when you try to skateboard.

Late night hacking anyone????

Long story short...... We had a fire drill and...... I don't have to explain myself, Burton 2 is killing this picture.

Again....... I don't have to explain myself......

As I said...... it was this girl

B2 getting together for the newest episode of the Big Bang Theory. My only problem
with this show is the fact that it is based at CalTech -_-

The amazing floor Master Natasha and her equally awesome boyfriend. If 2 years
from now I am a rolling ball of fat you can thank this person right here :P

The snapchat says enough about what is happening here.

How he thinks about crossword puzzles.

Frat. Fraternity. Whatever, I never thought I would join one. I never really considered myself that kind of guy. Maybe I would hang out with one from time to time, but I just never thought it was my lifestyle. However, here I am, a pledge of the illustrious Phi Kappa Theta. Based on my super legit MIT level statistics and data 93.67e142π788i percent of MIT guys don’t have any intention of being in a fraternity when the time comes around, but to your surprise you will realize is that MIT does not match the stereotype of fraternities at all. Now don’t get me wrong there are a billion options no matter what kind of frat culture you are looking for MIT can offer you something.
“Now Ben what kind of weird metaphor do you have for Phi Kappa Theta (PKT)?” Well little one I have a perfect metaphor. And it is this:

Is it Iron Man is it Captain America???? Who knows???? Lol anyway the point I am getting at is that PKT is a mix of being able to have an awesome time when you want to, but given you have to it is an amazing place to get some serious psetting done. The brothers here almost seem to skip that awkward nice to meet you stage I was talking about earlier and seem to go straight into the family stage. The second I walked into PKT they acted as if I had known them for years. Every one of the brothers is an individual with their own interest, yet they all embody a spirit of brotherhood at their core. I think the reason I chose PKT over any of the other fraternities was the fact that I had to put little to no effort in trying to feel like I belonged there. Whether it was learning about breakdancing, almost killing myself on one of those godforsaken Segway with no hands, losing terribly in a massive poker tournament, going parasailing in the Atlantic, or just chilling and having a late night bowl of jello….. PKT has become another place that I truly consider a family.

NOT DONE THOUGH. An important thing about finding a family in a fraternity is that having cool brothers is alright, but being able to find a connection with the guys that will be pledging with you is a key component. I could ramble on for eons about my fellow pledges. They are whiked smahhht, yet at time insainly stupid, tall, short, funny, curious, crative, inquisitive, hard working, etc. etc. etc. I am sure you guys get the picture. The new PKT brtothers are porbably the most individualistic group I have ever met, yet they are a group of people that I could now not see my life without. To anyone who might pledge to a fraternity when coming to MIT all I can say is this, get to know the people. The letters don't make a fraternity, the people make the fraterniy.

My brotherhood:

Woot Woot I accidentily was the first pledge to PKT.... Story for another time.

The new "associate members" of PKT (And then one of roomates, can you figure out which one is the roomate???)

And we cannot forget the beautiful rush girls and house friends of PKT!

Dinner with the Family.

A special shoutout to the sorority APhi for being an awesome audience for the PKT serenades.

A second shout to the amazing sorority SK for also being an outsdaing audience for PKT's serendes.

PKT Pinning Ceremony:

The best looking group... For obvious reasons. Special shout out to my PKT big brother Kevin Palisoc.
Despite his subpar pinning skills he is the best big a guy could ask for.

Guy in the front left breakdances..... Enough said....

This pic is pretty binary..... Jokes

Yet another shout out to Justin Martinez (far back in glasses), the brother in charge of
getting the new pledges integrated into the brotherhood.

This is the "I didn't know we already took pictures so we have to get all of the guys back
together again" picture.

Guy in the middle break dances.... Enough said...

The "haha we have beards and you don't pic"

Shoutout to Marcos on the right for taking all of these beautiful pictures (well except for
this one obviously).

.....................................
Have you ever had that feeling where you have so much going through your head at once that you can't get anything out. It's like you have 500000x10500000 things to say but your mouth and brain are like, "Sorry homie, we are only going to let one thing out at a time." I think the most efficient way to solve this problem would be to simply create a device that would allow you to think these 500000x10500000 and to simply transfer them directly into other people’s heads (pay close attention to my use of the word simply). Of course that doesn't exist (but hey, I don't see why you guys can't invent it); however, until then you will just have to settle with this video that I made with the help of another class of 2019 (Thank You Nina Lutz for multiple hours in editing, to my family for being awesome in the videos, to my best friends Diann Huynh and Chielo Mbaezue for participating, and then of course everyone at MIT for appearing)!!!

If you would like to hear me talk about getting to MIT and my last days at home then start at the beginning; however, if you would rather just see everything that went on once I finally got to MIT start at around 5:40!!!

To be honest, I could try to write about everything that has happened in this last week or so since I have arrived at MIT, but that would most likely result in the crashing of the internet and the explosion of my computer. I will probably do a few later posts about the details of things like moving in, the crazy weather, fire alarms, and whatnot in the future, but this post will just be a hodgepodge of my initial thoughts and feelings of moving into MIT!!!

I am not going to lie it wasn’t until the plane started landing that I realized I was going to be leaving home to start a new life as a student.

First things first would be the people here. Above the parasailing, the F1 racing, the beautiful walks across the river, etc. etc. etc. I have fallen in love with the people here (platonically of course…… at least for the most part (awkward lol)). The thing about MIT is they know exactly what they are doing when they pick out every respective student. MIT picks people like-minded enough to not hate each other, but different enough that every conversation with anyone leads to learning something new. I actually cannot remember how many times over these last few weeks I have found myself up at 2am sitting at some random table with seven people I didn’t know only hours before talking about the world and how we would love to see it change.h

This aspect of MIT truly meant the world to me. I have always been one of those guys that loved to question the world around me; however, in day to day life it is often hard to find other people that will listen let alone participate in a conversation about some random curiosity. However, at MIT you can more or less assume everyone you meet is more than ready to hop right into a conversation about anything from computers on wheels to gun control. Anyone/everyone is ready to both teach and learn about nothing/anything/everything, and I have to say I love that.

Of course a post about my initial thoughts at MIT would be nothing without my input on what it is like to start classes here….. So I shall do that……… ummm…… (Suspense must be killing you)…….. Now!

My first 8.01 pset…….. Ever since life is just different lolllll…….

Well to start off I would like to say that I had always heard that MIT was hard, and I of course I had been mentally preparing myself for that; nevertheless, I don’t think I was 100% ready for what was coming up.

My initial response to the first day of class could only be tied to that feeling you get when you reach into your pocket and realize that your phone isn’t there. Your heart starts to beat fast, you start looking around frantically for some sign that might bring you even the smallest sense of relief, and then you immediately start running through your memory in order to satisfy the question: “How did I get here?”

For the most part high school begins with a nice day of syllabus, followed by a few days or so of review, and then a nice simple subject that will ease you into the year. MIT on the other hand does not offer you the same luxury. MIT would much rather skip over the awkward metaphorical small talk that we have become so accustomed to, and go straight to the deep metaphorical big talk that we might reach at some time later in the metaphorical conversation going on here.

My Chinese name for Chinese I. You can call me Ou Jiaming ;)

I think the best example of this would be my first few days in my Chinese I class. I walk into a lecture room of about 10-12 students and the professor says to all of us ‘never spoken Chinese in our lives but hoping to come here and learn some Chinese, but not really sure what we are in for’ students and proceeds to tell us that this first class is the only class we will speak English in. Ever since, I have not heard a word of English in that class from the students or the professor.

Initially this idea terrified me. I had never spoken a word of Chinese and now for an hour a day it was my only language. Nevertheless, I very soon came to love the idea. I was learning more Chinese in my first week than I had learned of Spanish in three years. Not only that, but I was beginning to hold up small conversation and quickly able to understand and respond to the professor in Chinese, something I often had trouble doing in Spanish.

This idea of complete immediate emersion is not only present in Chinese, but any class at MIT. Instead of keeping us in our comfort zone, professors throw you into the deep end. Though it might be terrifying at first, the rate at which you begin to learn and understand the subject seems to increase exponentially. In just a week or so of classes I feel I have come to understand more about physics, biology, and calculus than I had learned over a semester in high school. To some that might be terrifying, and in all honesty it made me nervous as well; however, the fact that you come to realize is that you are not alone in this journey. Every other student around you is being plunged into the deep end of this pool with you. You are not trying to learn swimming all by yourself, it’s a group effort that encompasses every student that has decided to attend MIT. (Random note, you do actually have to learn to swim- fantastic blog post on that here.)

After only a week at MIT I have already come to fall in love with every part of the school. Of course this post cannot cover every aspect of my first week here, things like dance troop, fraternity Rush events (official brother of Phi Kappa Theta woot woot!!!), adventures into Boston, FYRE events, etc. etc. (I pronounce this word eh-tuh-kuh not et cetera, it’s just what I do, don’t worry about it), but that is what these blogs are for! Over my next four years I hope to give all of you guys insight into all of these events. So stay tuned, never know what might pop up :P !!!!!!!!!!!